Strip club fee likely to land in court

By Chris Moran

Published 8:02 pm, Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Seeking a solution to the bedeviling problem of untested rape evidence that is in some cases decades old, council imposed a $5-per-customer fee on strip clubs Wednesday so it can buy speedier lab work.

That simple solution, however, may come with complications of its own, starting with court costs.

"Houston has now bought itself the certainty of ongoing litigation," said Los Angeles-based attorney John Weston, who represents the Association of Club Executives of Houston. Councilwoman Ellen Cohen said she believes the city is on solid ground because the Houston ordinance she championed is based on a $5-per-customer statewide fee she authored as a state representative. That fee was upheld by the Texas Supreme Court last year.

The state has collected $15.7 million from strip clubs since Cohen's legislation went into effect in 2008, $3.5 million of it from Houston clubs. Yet, not a single penny has yet been spent on programs to help victims of sexual assault, as intended. Despite the state Supreme Court ruling, the case still is being litigated, according to James Pianelli, an attorney for the clubs. The collected money is being held pending the outcome of the litigation.

About 30 clubs covered

It is unclear whether litigation similarly will hold up the intended flow of money to the city's crime lab operations. Some clubs have not been paying the state fee as they await its final validation by the courts, said R.J. DeSilva, a spokesman for the state comptroller.

Cohen has said the Houston fee would raise $1 million to $3 million a year for rape evidence testing.

Collections in Houston will depend, in part, on who has to pay. Cohen estimated that about 30 clubs would be covered by her ordinance. The state has collected from 20 clubs in the city. A local attorney for the clubs said only a handful fit the city's definition of a sexually-oriented business, while an additional 50 clubs' entertainers wear just enough clothing to skirt the classification.

In the end, Cohen sold the ordinance to her colleagues as she declared, "We have waited long enough." Council passed it by a vote of 14-1.

"We have to do something to help the 4,000-plus women, children and men who have been sexually assaulted," said Cohen, who served for 18 years as CEO of an organization that runs a woman's shelter. "If we test one rape kit and bring one rapist to trial, we may also be solving numerous other cases. Rapists do not rape just once. They rape over and over again until they're caught."

Councilwoman Helena Brown voted against the ordinance. Brown said in an email that she opposes all new fees and called Wednesday's vote "thirty pieces of silver."

"First, a worthy cause: catching up on the inexcusable backlog of untested rape kits," Brown wrote. "Then, the justification on the new fees: SOBs will pay because they lead to rape. The hypocrisy: increased rape can continue just as long as we take some of the profit to pay for our mistakes and make us look good."

Cohen said there is a clear link between sexually-oriented businesses and sexual assault.

The University of Texas study on which she bases that assertion states: "Are sexually-oriented-businesses, alcohol, and the victimization and perpetration of sexual violence against women connected? An exhaustive review of the literature says yes." Later, it states: "However, no study has authoritatively linked alcohol, sexually-oriented-businesses, and the perpetration of sexual violence."

Today, then tomorrow

Weston disputed such a link.

"There's no legitimate government policy reason for taking one small segment of a very, very large industry - the industry that sells alcohol - and making that industry, that tiny segment, responsible for something which is entirely a citywide issue," he said. "Everybody in this city in this tea party environment ought to be very, very concerned about it because this is a precedent that gets established. If government today can target a particular taxpayer to pay something that is truly a municipal obligation, the obligation of the commonweal, then that sets a terrible precedent, because if it's our clients today, it's somebody else's clients tomorrow and a third group the day after that."